The internet is filled with rumors that Apple’s been working on a folding iPhone, and patents even show that Apple’s experimented with different layouts… but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned about Apple, they only debut products that fit perfectly into their ecosystem, and they spend years on product development in the pursuit of perfection; even though it can sometimes mean competitors beat them to the punch. With that being said, the iPhone Fold concept by Svyatoslav Alexandrov makes a compelling case for a folding smartphone. Here’s why.
From a strict ecosystem perspective, the iPhone Fold helps Apple develop one product that fits into two categories – the wildly popular smartphone category, and the sort-of dead mini-tablet category. With the iPhone Fold, Apple could easily discontinue the iPad Mini and focus on the higher-end, pro-grade tablet devices. The folding phone would then absorb the features of the iPad Mini, giving you a device that’s quite literally the best of both worlds.
The iPhone Fold concept designed by Svyatoslav Alexandrov (for the YouTube channel ConceptsiPhone) comes in the familiar Galaxy Fold format, with a primary 6.3-inch screen on the outside, and a larger, 8-inch folding screen on the inside. It ditches FaceID for the reliable TouchID, and turns the entire primary display into a fingerprint sensor – so you can unlock your phone simply by swiping up. The lack of FaceID means a significantly smaller notch with just one front-facing camera for selfies. The back, however, comes with the iPhone 12 Pro’s entire camera setup, featuring wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses, along with a flash and a LiDAR scanner. Open the iPhone up and it transforms into a squarish iPad Mini that’s designed to be perfectly portable. While the concept doesn’t say much about whether this device supports the Apple Pencil, I’d like to think it does, and designer Svyatoslav Alexandrov does mention that the concept is MagSafe capable and 5G ready, which already makes it a pretty good iPad replacement, all things considered.
Multiple sources say that Apple already is working on a folding phone and patents show that the company is researching hinge-details and even folding batteries. However, until folding phones really prove to be a smartphone category that’s here to stay, I suspect Apple’s experimentations will never really see the light of day. It’s fun though, to speculate how a folding iPhone can fit well into Apple’s ecosystem by reviving one product line (the iPhone), and retiring another (the iPad Mini)!
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These budget-friendly pair of headphones were designed to give the AirPods Max their very own iPhone SE moment.
As the iPhone breached the $1000 price-mark for the first time, Apple parallelly unveiled the SE, an affordable smartphone that provided the Apple experience, but without that hefty price tag. Designer Muhammet Uzuntaş has envisioned something similar for the $550 AirPods Max. Titled the Apple AirPods Max Light (a bit of a word-salad there), these conceptual headphones take Apple’s high-end audio experience and make them more accessible. The headphones come with a plastic body, while constantly maintaining the original silhouette. The headband is retained from the AirPods Max, although the cans themselves are made from plastic as opposed to anodized aluminum… that would help eliminate that condensation problem some of the AirPods Max headphones have been having. The band extends all the way to the sides, intersecting with the individual ear-cups. The right side of the band features a rolling cylinder which lets you control the volume by sliding forwards or backwards (as opposed to the crown in the original design), and the earpieces even slide up and down the cylindrical channel to help you adjust the fitting of the overall product.
The AirPods Max Light bridge a very visible gap in Apple’s product range. A gap left by the visible lack of Beats By Dre products on Apple’s shelves. Although conceptual, the AirPods Max Lite aim to fill that void with their affordable-yet-premium design and performance!
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I’m really tempted to buy a new iPhone, and that’s something Apple manages to pull off each year. With great features, cross-compatibility, better cameras, and hardware upgrades, the new iPhone gets me excited every year and this year’s no different… but I’m choosing to draw the line at the fact that it’s been 3 years since the first time Apple released a smartphone with a notch… and even after all that while, as companies have moved onto hole-punch cameras, under-display cameras, and literally folding phones, Apple still chooses to hold onto this weird, antiquated detail that makes even the newest of phones seem old. I love the new iPhone 12 series smartphones, but that notch is now a deal-breaker.
Here are some hard facts that Tim Cook gave us at the beginning of the iPhone presentation. Ever since its launch in 2007, the iPhone has consistently been the number 1 smartphone in the world, with literally billions of customers. Ranking at the 1st position when it comes to customer satisfaction for 13 years straight definitely isn’t a laughing matter. Apple has a track record of making phenomenal devices. Tim unveiled 4 new phones today – the iPhone 12 and 12 Mini (I’m really impressed that Apple decided to make a smaller, hand-friendly smartphone), and the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max – stating that these phones were a part of a new era for the iPhone. All four phones come equipped with 5G, making them faster, more efficient, and arguably safer too (because you don’t need to connect to sketchy public WiFi hotspots to get great coverage.
The new era of iPhones however still stick to an old-era design. The silhouette of both the 12 and 12 Pro series look exactly like the iPhone 4 and 5, and while I won’t really say much about the camera bump, given that it’s a necessity for peak performance, Apple’s still stuck to that godawful notch, which literally carves its way into the screen, eating up what could be prime pixel-estate. The reason why the notch stings even more is because Apple literally launched an iPad Air LAST MONTH with TouchID built into the power-button. It seems like with the new series of iPhones, Apple has all the right answers, but isn’t asking the right questions.
If you can look past that notch, the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro series are actually really great phones! The 12 series comes in a regular and a smaller size, boasting of a dual-camera setup, the A14 Bionic chip, 5G capability, a brilliant Super Retina XDR display, and a different type of glass created in collaboration with Corning. This new glass, called Ceramic Shield, has nanoceramic crystals growing on the glass matrix. The result is a glass that’s 4-times stronger than the one on the iPhone 11, making it MUCH more resistant to cracks and shattering. The 12 Pro series comes in a regular and a Max, with a stunning mirror-finish Stainless Steel bezel. The cameras are designed to blow the competition out of the water with Deep Fusion computational photography, Night Mode built into all shots, a LiDAR sensor for better edge-detection, and the ability to capture images in a new uncompressed format called Apple ProRAW. On the video front, the 12 Pro series uses HDR Video Recording, and are the only smartphones to record and edit in Dolby Vision, creating videos that are literally cinematic.
Perhaps the most interesting feature in the new iPhones this year around was a Tuesday Throwback to one of Apple’s greatest design details… the MagSafe. The new iPhones come with a MagSafe ring built into the back, allowing them to instantly align with wireless chargers, but at the same time also seamlessly connect with Apple’s new cases (including a full-phone sleeve with a clock-cutout on the front), and even with a newly unveiled series of leather wallet-modules that let you carry your Apple Card or other payment cards on the back of your phone. Belkin is rumored to be working on MagSafe chargers too, hopefully as Apple’s way of saying Mea Culpa for the time they announced the AirPower mat but couldn’t deliver on it.
All in all, the new iPhones are great in practically every department. They’re powerful computing machines thanks to a new chip and Apple’s in-house hardware and silicone manufacturing. The display’s great, the user interface is still considered one of the finest, and the camera is touted as an industry leader. Apple’s even leading in the sustainability department, with the new iPhones being manufactured carbon-neutral, and shipping only with Lightning/USB-C cables that allow you to charge your iPhone with any charging block or laptop, helping ultimately cut down on e-waste. As a result, the new iPhone boxes are slimmer too, letting you ship more units in the same shipping container, bringing its carbon footprint down. However, the one place it isn’t leading in is its antiquated design. The notch isn’t so much a feature anymore as much as it’s a blemish. While most companies have shifted to slimmer notches, hole-punch cameras, or even sliding camera modules, Apple clings to this black bar from 3 years ago. While the notch is itself a physical obstacle, it acts as a digital one too, given that FaceID in a time where people are wearing masks isn’t really ideal… and that other smartphone companies have been using in-screen fingerprint sensors for nearly 2 years now, and that Apple’s even created an alternative – a power-button with TouchID, but for a different product. The 12 and 12 Pro are every bit a part of a new era for the iPhone… it’s just that they don’t look the part.
If you watched the keynote just a few hours/minutes back (depending on when you’re reading this), the words “It Already Does That” will sound incredibly familiar to you. The words are proof of two things. A. The Apple Watch is a pretty remarkable device, and B. It’s so remarkable there’s little you can do to really improve it.
There was an entire video in Apple’s keynote dedicated to what the Apple Watch can already do – which is a testament to the company’s vision and cutting edge technology, but it also goes to show that the Apple Watch 6 isn’t VASTLY better than the Apple Watch Series 5. It’s just slightly better, and comes with a few embellishments to make it seem ‘new and better’.
The keynote starts with what a great life-saving device the Apple Watch is, and Tim, as is customary, talks about how he loves to read letters every day from Watch owners about how the miraculous device saved their life. This isn’t really too different from any of the previous Apple Watch reveals over the last 2-3 years. The Watch is a great device when it comes to keeping track of your vitals – that hasn’t changed – and it still tracks your heart rate, heart rhythm, EKG, and can tell if you’ve fallen or not… it already does that. This year, the Watch 6 comes with a built-in blood oximeter that can calculate the amount of oxygen in your blood by using infrared sensors to detect the color of your blood and parse it through well-written algorithms. The Blood Oximeter feature comes at a great time – given the nature of this pandemic, but it raises two questions. What feature would Apple have showcased had it not been for COVID-19? And how many of us will really use it after the pandemic’s long gone?
The Blood Oximeter runs on a new set of sensors embedded into the watch, but aside from that, there’s really no hardware upgrades to talk about other than the new S6 chipset and a larger, moderately brighter screen. It’s still the same old Apple Watch, which isn’t a bad thing, because the Apple Watch is a pretty remarkable device… but it isn’t a great thing either. The Blood Oximeter aside, the Watch 6 does practically everything the Watch 5 does. It comes with a heart-rate monitor, a sleep tracker, an EKG machine, an always-on display, an e-sim, and all the fitness tracking features your heart could desire. In short, “It already does that”.
Most of the Watch 6’s noteworthy upgrades come with WatchOS 7 and its UI, led by Alan Dye, VP of Human Interface Design and a successor to Jony Ive. The Watch 6 boasts of new faces that allow you to access a whole myriad of features and information right from the face of the watch. You could choose a minimal watch face, an artistic one (in collaboration with Geoff McFetridge), a color-striped one to correspond with your clothes, your home team, or Pride, a face that shows you your vitals, your appointments, or various time-zones, and even a Memoji Watch Face. Apple’s made improvements to its Nike and Hermès Watch-lines too, and even launched a Product Red version of the Watch 6 along with a ‘new type of single-loop’ silicone strap they call the Solo Loop.
I honestly believe there isn’t much Apple can do to make their Watch ‘vastly’ better. The Watch 6, at least according to me, is the pinnacle of smartwatch innovation and perhaps the only thing that can make it an absolute home-run is the ability to calculate blood-sugar without needing to prick your skin. The Watch 6 puts Apple in a very tough position because I’m struggling to think of what more a Watch could do, but that’s probably me living inside a box. That being said, Cook and his team did a great job so far, especially considering how now every part of the watch is made entirely from ethically sourced materials, recycled metals and plastics, with 100% renewable energy and no harmful chemicals. It’s worth noting that Apple’s even promised to completely carbon neutral by as early as 2030… here’s to hoping we all live to see that day.
